Published today (8 November) , an Annual Review of the performance and highlights of the UK’s national synchrotron, Diamond Light Source, during 2023/24 reveals a challenging and successful year for its scientists and 14,000 users.

Chairman of the Diamond Board, Prof Sir Adrian Smith PRS, who is stepping down after ten years, comments: “Over the past decade, this facility and its staff have made remarkable achievements. It has been an exciting and rewarding time seeing Diamond grow from 22 beamlines to some 33 today with additional complementary facilities (like ePSIC and eBIC*), supporting world-class science needed by the users. Throughout these ten years, it’s been clear that Diamond is an outstanding jewel in the UK science crown.”

In the review, Diamond’s CEO Prof Gianluigi Botton FRCS, reflects on the many successes of the past year. These include appearing in world media and television with heritage science like Sir David Attenborough’s documentary, Dinosaurs: The Final Day - released to millions worldwide in 2023 featuring measurements undertaken at Diamond. The Herculaneum scrolls first words were uncovered thanks to industry beamtime at Diamond and a longstanding Citizen Science Project involving hundreds of schools featured in the Guardian, Independent and many other media with the results published in one of the Royal Society of Chemistry titles.

He also highlighted that December 2023 marked Diamond’s 13,000th published journal article with a paper on Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Catalysts. The work presented measurements on nanoparticles at such precision that researchers gained insights into potential avenues for improving the performance of the catalyst. Another major milestone was the antibody work developed as a complementary therapy for COVID-19 alongside vaccination, work that resulted in a patent now taken forward as part of the AstraZeneca suite of treatments.

Prof Botton says: “All of these achievements reflect the skills, hard work and commitment of the dedicated staff of Team Diamond. They also reflect the strong engagement of a vibrant and growing user community in academia and industry. In the last budget year, after peer review of 2,034 proposals for experiments, 1,312 were awarded beamtime. This resulted in 15,972 experimental shifts being awarded across 33 beamlines and eight electron microscopes….” Nearly 40% of these experimental shifts were connected to research in biology and bio-materials; with 16% chemistry, 15.49% environment and 13.16% materials research making up the other major sectors. “We also welcomed 5,398 onsite user visits from academia across all instruments, with an additional 4,078 remote user visits. The machine continues to perform to the highest standard with 97% uptime. Diamond also continued its mission to engage and inspire the public through the promotion of science.”

The review notes the announcement of major funding from the Government and the Wellcome Trust for the Diamond-II upgrade of the machine and instruments. He explains that this was the culmination of years of efforts by a large team from Diamond, working with the users of the facility and the Diamond advisory committees. Prof Botton adds: “This is an extraordinary effort that will ensure Diamond remains competitive at the international scale. This upgrade will bring a factor of 20 times improvement in emittance coupled with an increase in electron beam energy from 3.0 to 3.5 GeV that will provide up to a factor of 70 improvement in brightness and coherence of Diamond’s photon beams at the higher energies. A new lattice geometry will allow us to not only keep and enhance all current beamlines but offers the opportunity for up to three flagship beamlines to emerge bringing us to a total of 36 beamlines. The new building to allow us to assemble the new machine components started in earnest this January 2024 and is due to complete in 2025 creating 5,000 square metres of space.”
*In its seventeenth year of experiments, Diamond is now operating with 33 beamlines and eight electron microscopes dedicated for experiments. A further five instruments are available for experiment support and sample preparation. Ten of the instruments specialise in life sciences and make up eBIC (electron Bio-Imaging Centre), with two dedicated for industry use. Two of the electron microscopes are dedicated to advanced materials research and are supplied by Johnson Matthey and the University of Oxford. These, along with a further instrument for sample preparation, form ePSIC (electron Physical Science Imaging Centre) and are operated under strategic collaboration agreements to provide for substantial dedicated peer reviewed user access.

Both eBIC and ePSIC are next to the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe beamline (I14). Along with eBIC and ePSIC, the UK X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) Hub, the Membrane Protein Laboratory (MPL), the XChem fragment screening facility, the LabSAXS facility and the Active Materials Laboratory make up the complementary integrated facilities available at Diamond. For academic research, Diamond instruments (beamlines and microscopes) are free at the point of access through peer review. For proprietary research, access can be secured through Diamond.

ENDS